This blog is about macro-economics, financial markets and the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

— Neo: What truth?
— Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo.

2009-06-30

What to think about carbon taxes?

There's an ongoing debate whether or not the carbon tax that the US goverment wants to impose is a good idea. On top of that, there's an even bigger debate about whether or not global warming actually is real. It reached the point where global warming has been recently renamed climate change since even though the polar ice is melting the warming doesn't seem to be global. The scientific community seems to be split in two camps, none of which can really prove anything. So even though I think that the major polluters and oil companies in the world finance the research of those trying to prove that there's no climate change at all or that if there's any, it's not due to human (destructive) activity.

My opinion is that nobody can prove that carbon emissions are dangerous for the planet or not. I mean, prove in a mathematical/scientific way that cannot be refuted.

So, my opinion is that climate change or not pollution does not do any good and can only hurt the environment.

So even in doubt, why should we keep on cutting trees, pouring toxic waste into the ocean and rivers, and emitting all sorts of toxic pollutants into the atmosphere? What good does it do?

Also, the real cost of oil should include the environmental cost (cleaning after ourselves) and also the cost of "producing" oil, which seems to take thousands of years if not millions to create. Today, the cost of oil is actually only the cost of discovery + extraction. In that sense, it makes sense to find a way to make the price of oil move toward its real cost.

I honestly believe that if cleaner energy sources haven't made their way through is because the major oil companies are preventing them from emerging.

Then, government taxes are probably not the solution to the problem, specially goverment like Obama's.